Seen through the eyes of the transport manager, this article uses the analogy of air and road transportation to highlight how traditional test automation tools may well have lost their original objectives. It describes a new vision of automation that could be as ground breaking as the arrival of Sir Frank Whittle's new jet engine.
The authors have been creating software testing and automation tools for nearly twenty years and are best known as the authors of the QARun product acquired by Compuware Corporation in the mid 90s. The authors' continual frustrations with how difficult software testing tools are to use and maintain (including the ones they previously designed and implemented) has led them to continually search for improvements in how to actually improve the process.